Thursday, June 21, 2007

Close To The Edge

Chapter 4: Speeding Up The Process

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After some running I arrived at Jack’s place and immediately heard screaming and the sound of glass breaking. Never a good sign.

I almost got to the door when it flew open and Anna ran past me. Jack appeared at the door. He didn’t look too happy.

“You wanted to talk?”

“Cut the crap Chris. What did you talk about with Anna yesterday?”

“What does it ha-”

“I’m her fucking brother I need to know these things!” Jack’s a good guy, but he has trouble in keeping his temper under control.

“What I talk about with Anna is between her and me, it doesn’t concern you.”

“When it’s about drugs it damn does!” Wait, he knows about those?

“It has nothing to do-”

“It does, I found her stash!”

Damn Anna. Always getting in trouble and I’m always the one who has to face her brother afterwards.

“So why don’t you ask her about it instead of interrogating me?!”

“She just ran out the door in case you happened to miss it!”

“Well that’s not my problem!” We spent a minute just glaring each other. Finally Jack took a deep breath.

“Okay, I’m sorry for yelling at you. Now can we talk this through like adults?” I nodded. We sat around the table in the kitchen.

“Why can’t you tell me what you talked about with Anna yesterday?”

Well that’s a million dollar question.“I dunno actually.”

“What?!”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I know I could and should tell you, but I won’t. The stuff we talk about is for me and Anna to keep.” Jack buried his head in his hands with a groan.

“So you’re telling me that you’re keeping secrets for a possible soon-to-be junkie?” He glanced at me with the look that begged me to say that I was joking. I really felt sorry for having to disappoint him.

“Bingo.” He groaned again.

“Can’t you make an exception for once?” I shook my head. “C’mon we’ve been friends for how long?”

“We’re not friends.” Jack let out a laugh at that and got up from the table. I looked at him.

“Oh yeah. You always say that.” What? I’ve never said that so he can hear it, how- “And you always have that look on your face when you think of something really hard. Anna pointed that out to me.” Well that explains it.

“So you two just sit and talk about me all day long?”

“No. Though Anna would probably enjoy that.” I scoffed. Anna really loved to talk about me. It didn’t even matter who she was talking to, as long as she was talking about me.

“Really, you know how Anna gets sometimes.” He probably saw the look on my face because he added “Okay, all the time.”

“So how much has she told you?”

“Not much really. Just some small stuff I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.”

“Like what?” He thought about that for a few seconds.

“Like how you’ve been a bit out of it lately.” Huh?

“Yeah, like you’re seeing something we don’t. You’re always looking over your shoulder or at the empty corner or something.” He leaned in closer. “Anything you’d like to share with us Chris?”

“Nope.” Now that he mentioned it, where’s Jadie? I looked around a bit. Big mistake.

“See, you’re doing it again.” Okay, let’s play stupid.

“Doing what?” He shook his head.

“Nice try. But I won’t push it. For now.” Well I sure am looking forward to the time when you do start pushing it! Now who didn’t notice the sarcasm?

“Can I go now? I’ve got some stuff to do-”

“Tell me what you talked about with my sis and you can go.” I sighed. We were going around in a circle.

“I told you-”

“How about a few words? You don’t have to tell me all of it, just something.” I thought about it. At least Anna wouldn’t have a reason to skin me alive…

“Fine.” He seemed to cheer up a little.

“Alright. First word?”

“Money.” He paled.

“She has trouble paying for drugs?” Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

“Knew you were a smart one.”

“Shit. How much?”

“She said she has half of it but asked me for 250.”

“Shit.” He got up from his chair and walked a little. “Listen, if I talk about this with Anna, could you be there? She seems to talk only to you, so-”

“Sure.” We were quiet for a while. “Can I go now?”

“Yeah.” I got up and walked right out the door and back home. I was a bit worried about Jadie. She was sitting in my room and making faces at the cat.

“Jadie?” Her head snapped up and she ran to hug me.

“Where were you?! I thought you left me!” She attached herself to my legs like a leech.

“I was at Jack’s, he had a bit of a problem.” She looked up to my face with teary eyes.

“…so you didn’t leave me?” I shook my head.

“Why would I do that?”

“Dad and Jane said they’d never leave me and th-then…” She started crying.

“Well I’m not your dad or Jane. And as I said, I’m not going anywhere.” I patted her head. She stopped crying and looked at me again. Then she smiled and let go of my legs.

“I like you.”

“I noticed.”

“No. I really, really like you.” Her smile got wider. In some sense it was pretty disturbing. Then she went back to the cat and started making faces again.

“Why do you do that?” She looked at me.

“Do what?” I waved at the cat that was sleeping on my bed. It seemed to be its favorite spot in the whole house. If you didn’t find it anywhere else, it was most likely curled up on my bed.

“Make faces at it.” She glanced at the sleeping cat and then shrugged.

“I don’t know.” Then mom knocked at the door, lunchtime.

The whole family (plus Jadie) sat around the table and started eating. Of course mom had to start some kind of conversation.

“So how are you and your girlfriend doing Alex? When will you bring her over?” I rolled my eyes. Alex would bring her over if he’d want to hear a lecture on safe sex which wasn’t anytime soon.

“Why don’t you bug Chris about his girlfriend, why always me?”

“Oh yes! When-”

“She’s not my girlfriend, how many times do I have to tell you that?” I took a sip of water. Jadie was walking around the kitchen and glancing at me every now and then.

“Well why were you two making out last night?” My water came right back up.

“Alex!”

“Mom, it’s true! John saw them last night!”

“We weren’t making out!”

“You were! John saw you!”

“And we all know that John’s a little brat that exaggerates everything!”

“Boys! Cut it out, we’re trying to eat!”

Damn Anna!

Jadie looked at me like was something very interesting.

“Oh I almost forgot! Your cousin’s coming over this Friday.”

“Which, we have about a ton of cousins.”

“Daniel.”

“Darn.”

“Alex!”

“But he’s just like Chris! No fun at all!”

“Gee, thanks. Nice to know you’re appreciated.”

My parents paled at that.

After I finished my lunch I went to my room and tried to do some schoolwork. I didn’t even touch my literature assignment.

“Why don’t you ever do this?” Jadie grabbed the paper and read it.

“Because I suck at stuff like that.”

“But aren’t poems easy?”

“I hate love poems.”

“Oh.” She looked at the paper again and put it on my desk. Then she lay down on my bed and curled into a ball. A few hours had passed when I finally finished my homework. Jadie hadn’t moved an inch from her position.

“Why is your family like that?” The odd question surprised me.

“What do you mean? Like what?”

“…happy.”

“I don’t know.” She got up and walked over to me.

“But you’re not happy.”

“Erm, your point?”

“…don’t you want to be happy?”

“Who says I don’t?” She didn’t reply.

I went to school again next Monday. Jadie was still clingy as ever an wanted to come along. I brought the 250 Anna asked me to bring. Better get it over with as soon as possible.

But I faced Jack before I reached Anna.

“Did you bring that money you promised her?”

“Yeah.”

“Great.” He looked over his shoulder. I saw Anna chatting with a big group of girls. Nothing unusual about that.

“Okay, after she’s paid for the shit, she’s going to rehab.”

“You sure you can get her there?” He nodded. Jadie was looking around again.

“Got her to one place last night, now she just has to go there and it’s not up for discussion.”

“Great. One problem though: how’re you gonna drag her there?”

“Simple. Once she goes through the door, she won’t be out before she’s through the program.”

“Well that’s one thing, but you didn’t answer my question.” Jack shut up when he saw Anna approaching. Jadie looked like someone just hit her.

“Hi honey!” she said the second she arrived to us, and added less enthusiastically “Hi bro.” Jadie hissed at her.

“Anna, I’m not your honey.”

“Of course you are! Can we talk in private?”

“He brought the money.” Anna looked shocked and stared at her brother.

“What are you talking about?”

“Cut the act. Once you’ve paid you’re going to rehab.”

“Rehab?! For what?!”

“Drugs. And Chris agrees with me.” He nodded to my direction. Anna’s head snapped right to me.

“What?! You told him?!”

“He didn’t tell me anything, it was pretty obvious.” Anna cursed for a while.

“Fine! So where’s the money?”

“Hold it, I’m coming with you!”

“Like hell you are!”

“Chris?” I gave the money to Jack.

“Hey I’ve got class and I gotta make an excuse for my teach so-”

“Yeah, you can go.” I left Jack and Anna to yell at each other and made my way to the class. Jadie glared behind her before we turned around a corner. Mr. Haddigan was already in the room.

“Morning!”

“Morning, I actually-”

“-didn’t do your assignment?” Busted…

“…yeah.”

“It’s alright. I’ve heard what you’ve been through lately and I know you’re really not in the mood for love poems. I’ll overlook it this time.”

“…thanks.”

“No problem. How are you doing now?”

“Fine.”

“No annoying comments or anything like that?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. But if anything like that happens-”

“-I’ll tell you. Got it.” Not in this lifetime. Telling never works. I went to my seat. Jadie started feeling the floor with her fingers again.

The rest of the week went pretty well (except for the fish I had to slaughter in biology class). My cousin Daniel arrived on Friday. I was the lucky one to go to meet him at the train station. It was just my luck that his train was late and I had to stick around for almost an hour. Having to look after Jadie didn’t make it any more fun (she almost got run over by a train a few times). Finally he showed up.

He hadn’t changed much since the last time I saw him (around 3 years ago). He was a bit taller though, but he still had the chestnut-hair and brown eyes. And the smile that made all the girls turn into fangirl-mode. Jadie looked ecstatic. I had never seen her act like that around anybody.

“Chris! How are you? I heard about the cutting-thing.”

“Daniel! Same old, same old. I heard about the therapy sessions.” He grinned. He was the only person I knew that didn’t treat me like a fragile egg after my suicide attempt. He was the only person I could talk about anything freely, and he was the first person I wanted to call from the hospital.

“So how is everybody? Alex still a moron?”

“Afraid so. But it’s pretty much the same as ever.”

“Bummer!”

“You said it.” Jadie was walking next to Daniel and staring at him with wide eyes.

“What about Jack and his clingy sister?” We both laughed at that.

“Well, Jack’s going to college and Anna’s going to rehab.”

“Sounds great, except the rehab.”

“It’s for her own good.”

“Yeah, it probably is.”

Once we got home and unpacked all of Daniel’s stuff in my room (he had to sleep in my room) and ate dinner we went out for a walk. We bought two cans of soda (one for each) on the way and stopped at the park to drink them. I noticed that I wasn’t as tall as I thought I was, since I fitted in the swing pretty nicely.

“Nothing’s really changed here, huh?”

“Nope…how about you? Anything new or exciting going on?” I sipped some soda and stared at the sunset.

“Well, not really…I have a girlfriend.”

“Don’t you dare tell that to my mom, she’ll kill me for being different!”

“What? Alex has a girl already?”

“Yeah, and it’s wrecking my nerves.”

“You have my condolences.”

“Well didn’t that really made me feel better.” I threw away the empty can and we headed home.

“So when’s your next meeting with…what’s-her-name…”

“Laura.”

“Yeah, that’s it.” Daniel kicked a rock that had gotten on his way.

“Tomorrow. And my parents are coming along.” He turned to look at me in shock.

“Who’s idea was that?”

“Laura’s.”

“She needs to change jobs.”

“Hardly. Wanna hear the best part?” He stopped in his tracks.

“There’s WORSE?”

“Of course, why wouldn’t there be? We’re going to go through my medical records.” He sighed.

“Shit.”

“Yeah. And I think we both know what those damn files contain.”

“Any way you can get out of it?”

“Apparently, no.”

“Can I come too?”

“What?”

“I wanna come along! You know, mental support and everything…”

“I don’t think Laura will buy that.”

“It’s always worth a shot, right?”

It turned out that I was wrong and Laura was okay with Daniel joining the session. For some reason, we lay on our beds in the middle of the night (Jadie hadn’t given up her recent habit of holding on to me when she slept) and I felt like I could tell someone about Jadie.

“Dan?”

“Hmm?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“What?”

“You swear you won’t laugh at me or send me to the nuthouse?”

“I swear, what is it?” Jadie’s hold on me tightened and she mumbled something in her sleep. I was quiet for a second.

“Chris? What is it?” Jadie started gripping on my shirt a bit too tightly.

“…no, Jane, come back…” I felt tears soaking the back of my shirt.

“Chris?” I was grateful that he couldn’t see my face, because Jadie had just started digging her nail into my skin. Daniel asked me what the matter was for a few times and then he gave up. I really didn’t feel like answering him. I had enough hard time trying not to make noise when Jadie was still clawing my stomach.

When I woke up the next morning Daniel had already went for breakfast. I was changing my shirt when I looked in the mirror.

I had red nail marks all over my stomach. I was about to ask Jadie about it when she looked at me from the bed.

“Insides didn’t come out.”

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A/N: Sorry this update took a while...I had a bit of a writer's block. Lack of sleep might have something to do with it too.


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